


This is how we heal (I will kiss you like forgiveness)

by maharetr



Series: Imagine Bucky - maharetr post [15]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Intimacy, Prompt Fic, Scars, Short, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-19
Updated: 2021-02-19
Packaged: 2021-03-15 10:41:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29557881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maharetr/pseuds/maharetr
Summary: "Imagine Bucky caressing, kissing and stroking Nat's scars. The scars he gave her."
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Natasha Romanov
Series: Imagine Bucky - maharetr post [15]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/255532
Comments: 5
Kudos: 24





	This is how we heal (I will kiss you like forgiveness)

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the devastatingly good poem ["Mouthful of forevers"](https://wordsfortheyear.com/2014/11/29/mouthful-of-forevers-by-clementine-von-radics/) by Clementine Von Radics
> 
> Written for the [Imagine Bucky tumblr](imaginebucky.tumblr.com), based Ondariaziablik's prompt: "Imagine Bucky caressing, kissing and stroking Nat's scars. The scars he gave her." Originally posted [here](https://imaginebucky.tumblr.com/post/114055228311/imagine-bucky-caressing-kissing-and-stroking) on 19 March 2015.

His memories are returning in fits and starts. The good memories almost always contain Steve, and he can share them with Steve, and they can trace the memory back to a smell, or a time of year, and together they can fill in the gaps and make something even better out of it.

The bad memories—the fragments of blood and screams and horrors—he doesn’t want to share with anyone. He doesn’t know what triggers them, they feel contextless, random, like something rearing out of the shadows for an anonymous attack. Except. Except Natasha sometimes also goes quiet around the same time. And this night—0200 and restlessly pacing his room—there’s a tapping at his door.

Natasha is there, quiet and barefoot.

He steps back to let her in, and she steps forward, splays her hands on his chest and goes up on her toes to kiss him.

“Hey,” she says against his mouth, and something inside him uncurls.

“Hey,” he whispers, and kisses her back, hard and desperate. She goes for his belt. She pushes down his pants, and he pushes up her skirt, and round one is against the hastily closed bedroom door. Round two they get as far as the bed, shoving blankets and clothes to the floor.

She sprawls back on the sheets, and his breath catches at the sight of her open and vulnerable. He’s mercifully beyond thought—his body remembers this, and he goes to his knees almost involuntarily. She slides her fingers into his hair, stroking his scalp, and it’s a personal challenge to get her to clutch his head and buck against him with a muffled scream.

“We did this a lot, didn’t we?” he says, after, as their breathing settles.

“As often as we could,” she says. “Which was never as often as we wanted, but, hey.” She quirks an eyebrow. “We did pretty good.”

There’s a nick in that eyebrow, a tiny hairless scar. He strokes his thumb over it, and she smiles wryly. “Explosion debris in Berlin.” He strokes the side of her face, her neck, down over her shoulder. There’s a bullet graze, a faint silvery slash, on her upper arm. “Budapest,” she shrugs, and he shifts away from it, obligingly.

There’s a couple of blade scars on her forearm. They’re almost invisible in the dim lighting, but he kisses them anyway. “Knife sparring,” she says, and then just as casually: “With you.”

He pauses, his mouth still on her skin, and looks up at her. “Learned from the best,” she says, smiling,

“I… I don’t remember…” he looks from her to the scars again.

“I know.” She strokes his face. “It’s okay, I gave as good as I got.” She drags her thumb nail against his cheekbone, a dull sting. “I sliced you open here, once, I was so pleased with myself. You healed in days, you lucky bastard.”

He finds himself smiling at her grin.

“They punished me for it,” she says, almost absently, and his smile slips.

“For injuring me?” He can’t envision it. She shakes her head.

“For pride, for thinking myself better than the others, for taking pleasure in my work.” She shrugs. “They were weaknesses, things that could be exploited, that would distract me from missions.”

He sets about distracting her again, then: he raises her arm to kiss each faint line, and diverts to her breasts until her breathing quickens. He lightly rakes his fingers over her ribs to make her squirm, and finds himself hesitating over the bullet scar on her stomach—9mm round, his brain catalogs automatically, missing most of her vitals, a clean through-and-through, lucky for her—he flicks a glance at her face and finds her staring back, biting her lip in the barest of hesitations.

“That’s from you, too,” she says, simply, and he freezes.

“Nat…” he breathes.

“Hey,” she says, quirking a smile. “I was working for SHIELD by then. You could’ve shot me in the head. You _should_ have shot me in the head.” The distressed sound he makes is entirely involuntary; he closes his eyes.

She grabs his face, demanding his gaze. “You were my Winter,” she says. “They _burned me from your brain_ , and even having no memory of me, you couldn’t bring yourself to kill me, even if you didn’t know _why_.” 

He’s shaking a little, but he looks back down at it, and hesitantly traces its edges with his fingertips. She smiles. “I am so proud of this one.” And if she can be, he can try. He takes a breath, bends his head, and kisses it.


End file.
